1906-1940

This period saw the peak and the beginning of the death knell for the American
circus. There were enormous social, technological, and economic changes
underway, as well as the San Francisco earthquake, the Spanish Influenza, two
World Wars, the Great Depression, the first Model T, the National Association
for Advancement of Colored People, talking pictures, Charles Lindbergh’s
solo transatlantic flight, and so forth. All of these had a direct and
indirect effect on the American circus, bringing new possibilities and new
distractions to take audiences out of the tents.

The number of circuses traveling on rails reached its high point in 1911,
when thirty-two shows toured the country. The growth of the American
circus over the eighteen years was exponential: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey
circus toured with one hundred cars in 1923, carrying big top tents that could
hold more than ten thousand spectators. These massive shows required fourteen
acres of land for all of the equipment, animals, and people.

In 1905, Bailey acquired full ownership of Adam Forepaugh and Sells Bros.
Circus and then sold a half interest in it to the Ringlings. In 1906,
Bailey, who was considered the best manager in circus history and a model of
efficiency and generosity, died. After his death, the Ringlings purchased the
remaining share of the Forepaugh-Sells Circus from his widow. In
1907, they also purchased their largest competitor, the “Barnum & Bailey
Circus.” In A Ticket to the Circus, Charles Philip
Fox quotes a notice from the January 26, 1907 issue of Variety: “The
Greatest Show On Earth on July 8, 1907, became theirs [Ringling] for $400.000,
the bill of sale stipulating that the Ringling’s would take over at the
close of the season on or about November 1, 1907. News of the sale was
withheld from the press at this time pending the acquisition of public stock
in the circus” (A Ticket to the Circus,p.37). With these acquisitions
the brothers from Baraboo, Wisconsin, became the most famous and admired circus
owners in America. They decided to divide the country in half and continue
to operate both the Ringling Bros. and the Barnum & Bailey Circuses. This
arrangement continued until 1919 when they merged the two to form the Ringling
Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

In the meantime, after losses exceeding $150,000 from a flood at their Peru,
Indiana winter quarters, Ben Wallace sold his Hagenbeck-Wallace circus to an
Indianapolis syndicate of seven partners in 1913. One of the partners
was Edward M. Ballard, who had made his wealth as casino manager at French
Lick Springs, Indiana. To attract visitors to the casino during the winter,
Ballard wintered the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus near French Lick Springs, almost
200 miles north of their previous winter quarters. By the end of the 1915 season,
Ballard had bought out all of his partners except two, Crawford Fairbanks and
C.E. Corey, and had full control of the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus. Unfortunately,
in 1918 the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus was involved in the worst circus rail
accident ever recorded; eighty-six people were killed and more than one hundred
were injured when an empty troop train crashed into the circus train, which
was carrying three hundred people. The wooden cars burned fiercely, fueled
in part by kerosene lanterns used to light the sleeping cars.

Ballard sold the circus in December 1918 for $36,000 to Jerry Mugivan and
Bert Bowers, who already owned Howes Great London Shows and Robinson’s
Famous Shows. In 1921, Ballard, Mugivan, and Bowers formed a syndicate, the
American Circus Corporation, in Peru, Indiana. Between 1921 and 1929,
the American Circus Corporation owned the titles for Howes Great London Shows,
Robinson’s Famous Shows, Hagenbeck-Wallace, Sells-Floto, Sparks Circus,
and the Al G. Barnes Circus. In the spring of 1929, the American Circus
Corporation sent out five circus — Hagenbeck-Wallace, John Robinson,
Sells-Floto, Sparks, and Al G. Barnes — in a total of 145 rail cars,
versus the combined Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey show of only
ninety cars.

This success could not go on forever, unfortunately. The eventual downfall
of many of the touring circuses was caused by several factors, most beyond
anyone’s control. In 1927, The Jazz Singer opened and kicked
off the talking picture and a much more interesting and complex form of entertainment. Improved
transportation and communication technology made travel easier for previously
isolated cities and towns. Circus day had been a major event in every
community that the circus visited for decades, but now there were other kinds
of entertainment. “By the 1920s its physical presence began to
diminish. The morning street parade …. Disappeared at the big
railroad outfits. The ethnological congress and up-to-date spectacles
of recent foreign events also vanished. By the 1930’s audience
numbers were … in decline. Urban development and the rise of the
suburbs pushed the show grounds away from the vicinity of the rail yards…. But
more significantly, the circus no longer had a monopoly on novelty or current
events. Movies [and] radio … provided audiences with compelling and
immediate images that displaced the circus as an important source of information
about the world.” (Davis, Janet, The Circus Age Culture & Society
under the American Big Top. P. 228-229). Worst of all, in October
1929, the crowds that the circuses depended on for their existence found themselves
in the midst of the Great Depression.

In 1929, John Ringling, the last of the five brothers, failed to renew the
contract to place his show in Madison Square Garden. Opening in the Garden
had been the traditional opening for the new circus season dating back to P.
T. Barnum. The Garden’s management contacted the American Circus
Corporation to have a combination of the Sells-Floto and Hagenbeck-Wallace
show open the 1930 season. In what turned out to be a very bad business
decision, John Ringling borrowed money and purchased the entire American Circus
Corporation for approximately $2 million dollars in September 1929. This
made him the undisputed king of American circus, at least until the economy
collapsed in the Great Depression. Ringling was able to make payments
on his loan, but poor business in 1930 and 1931 drained his reserves. In
the 1932 season, he had to reduce his stable of six circuses to four—Ringling-Barnum,
Hagenbeck-Wallace, Sells-Floto and Al G. Barnes. The John Robinson and
Sparks shows were shelved. That year, he was deposed by family members
as general manager of the circus, and replaced by Samuel Gumpertz. John
died a few years later in December 1936 in New York City.

In 1938 John Ringling North and his brother Henry, sons of Ida Ringling (the
only sister of the five Ringling brothers), took control of the Ringling Brothers
and Barnum & Bailey Circus, “The Big One.” In the 1938
season of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus added Gargantua
the Great, a fierce gorilla, to the show. Gargantua was not the largest
or the most ferocious gorilla outside of Africa, but he was an enormous hit,
the biggest attraction since Jumbo. Gargantua’s face had been disfigured
in 1931 by a misguided sailor seeking revenge on his captain during the voyage
to the United States. The sailor threw nitric acid in the face of the baby
gorilla, leaving a scar that looked like hateful sneer. Circus press
agent Roland Butler had transformed the deformed animal into Gargantua the
Great. Almost single-handedly, Gargantua rescued the show from the severe financial
bind it found itself in by the end of the Depression years.

North brought the show back from near ruin, but he fired many old-timers and
hired new “Hollywood” types who ran roughshod over tradition in
the name of glitz. In 1939, he hired industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes
to redesign the midway, sideshow banners, and a cage for Gargantua and his “wife.” North
also hired Charles Le Maire, a designer who worked for Ziegfeld’s Follies
and the George White Scandals, to restyle and streamline Ringling Bros. and
Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows. The 1939 program boasts that the
show was a new and “rejuvenescence” form. The ‘39 season
had air conditioning and the inside of the big top was painted in shades of
blue, making the aerial acts clearer and easier to see when illuminated by
the follow spots. The 1940 production of “The Greatest Show on
Earth” hired the famed costume designer Max Weldy of Paris to re-create
the return of Marco Polo for the opening spectacle, at cost of more than $80,000.

The Depression shut down or severely limited many circuses. Between
1929 and 1932, the Gentry Bros, Christy, Cole, Robbins, Robinson, Sparks, 101
Ranch and Sells-Floto folded their tents. By 1933, there were only three
railroad circuses traveling in America. Urban growth left no land to
erect large tents and street parades were no longer practical for in modern
fast-paced American towns and cities. Movie theatres were giving the American
population more opportunities to spend their limited entertainment dollars.
The Hagenbeck-Wallace and the Al G. Barnes shows succumbed in 1938. In
1939, the Cole Brothers became the last company to give up the tradition of
the horse-drawn circus parade.

Still, there were signs of growth and change. In 1935, Jess Adkins and
Zack Terrell revived the Cole Bros. Circus, bringing in equipment from the
Christy and Robbins shows, and building it back to the public eye. The
first three years featured a young wild-animal trainer named Clyde Beatty who
would become the premier wild-animal trainer in America. In 1939, D.R.
Miller, his brother Kelly and their father started a small dog-and-pony show
called the Miller Brothers Circus, which grew into the Al G. Kelly-Miller Bros.
Circus. Kelly-Miller was where the great American truck circus was developed: The
spool truck, the seat wagons, and an impressively efficient logistical system
for “high grass”operations were all originated there.

As the American circus dug out of the ashes of the depression, it did not
have the same splendor or glory. The large roaming tented circuses of
the twenties and the thirties no longer commanded the American landscape. The
circus was no longer the only exciting form of popular entertainment and was
fighting for its very existence. A lack of large tracts of land that
could house the vast number of tents forced circuses to move away from the
cities and into the country. By 1940, the country was poised to enter the Second
World War and to go through a series of industrial, technological, and social
changes. The circus would have to adapt or become irrelevant. But,
as it always had, the American circus continued to bring to entertainment to
children of all ages and remained America’s preeminent touring entertainment
enterprise. The events listed below show the circus moving through a very difficult
time in American history

Date

Event

1906

James A. Bailey dies, widow runs the Barnum & Bailey Circus

James Bailey died April 11, 1906 in Mount Vernon, New York.

1906

San Francisco earthquake

1906

Kellogg sells Corn Flakes for the first time

1907

Oklahoma 46th state admitted to the Union

1907

Ringling Brothers acquire Barnum & Bailey Circus for
$410,000

The Ringling Brothers now own both shows, but the two continue to advertise and perform as
separate entities for twelve more years.

Lillian at 4 foot 9 inches tall and 95 pounds made her debut on April 17, 1915 at the
Coliseum in Chicago. Lillian becomes a star by doing "arm planges" or "flip overs." She would
hang from one arm, twist her body up and over her shoulder (dislocating her shoulder), making a
full revolution in mid-air. Her record was 249.

1915

Poodles Hanneford sets record of running and leaping on and off of a running horse
with the Barnum & Bailey Circus.

1916

Barnum & Bailey cross the continent

1917

The United States joins the fighting in WWI

1918

Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train wrecks in Hammond, Indiana and 86 people are
killed

1918

Barnum & Bailey cross continent on its last tour under the B&B title

1918

World War I ends

1919

Ringling Bros. combine their show with Barnum & Bailey Circus to create Ringling
Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Circus The Greatest Show on Earth

The street parade had traditionally been used to advertise the arrival of a circus in town.
It also served as a showcase for some of the features of the performance.

1920

Alfredo Codona was the first performer to consistently achieve a triple somersault
on the flying trapeze.

1920

Jerry Mugivan and Bert Bowers purchase the Yankee Robinson's
Circus and the Sells-Floto Circus and the title of Buffalo
Bill's Wild West Show. These were added to Howe's Great London
Circus, John Robinson's Circus and the
Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus

1920

51% of U.S. population live in cities with more than 2,500 people

1921

The American Circus Corporation is formed.

1921

1921-1923 Warren Harding serves as 29th President

1923

On August 2, 1923, President Warren Harding dies of a heart attack in San
Francisco

1923

1923-1929 Calvin Coolidge serves as 30th President

1925

The Scopes (Monkey) Trial allows individual states to ban the teaching of evolution in
public schools

1925

Clyde Beatty becomes the youngest animal trainer in the country at the age of 25.

In 1926 Clyde Beatty combines 40 lions and tigers in the arena cage in the same
performance.